Posted on 04/17/2003 1:03:26 AM PDT by WaterDragon
1. Alcohol consumption is intentional impairment -- indeed there is no other purpose.
2. The impairment is gradual, i.e. there is no 'magic threshold' where, all of a sudden, impairment occurs.
3. While it is true that we (societally) allow other impaired drivers to drive i.e. the elderly and the handicapped, there is nothing comparable to alcohol where we allow individual drivers to intentionally impair their ability to drive and yet do so. It is insane.
4. BTW, if there were a special track (like Autopia at Disneyland) for the drinkers and the drunks, I could care less. They could kill off one another and themselves and improve the gene pool. But, alas, such is not the case. After intentionally impairing themselves, they go right out on the same highways as our wives and children. I have zero sympathy for the poor drunk who 'only' impaired himself 'a little bit'.
A drug user is able to understand the effects of the drug he's about to take and moderate his intake. Or are you suggesting that it's legitimate to ban drugs that can in sufficient quantity render the user unable to prevent himself from committing hazardous acts? If so, which drugs are those, and does the list include alcohol?
You remain the master of the irrelevant reply.
That prohibitionists thought so doesn't make it so.
I am suggesting that there are drugs that it is inappropriate to sell people until they demonstrate an understanding of the effects, or at least inappropriate to sell to people who have demonstrated an inability understand and moderate the effects. If that means we have to license people to buy alcohol, and make that license revokable for a DWI conviction, so be it.
Perhaps you could find a reference which supports your contention?
Perhaps you could find a reference which supports your contention?
I see nothing in the quoted text that requires support.
I contend that the opinion of prohibitionists is insufficient to establish that an amendment was not needed.
Conservatives should note the following about prohibitionists:
'Progressivism and prohibition were, in his [historian James H. Timberlake's] view, closely related middle-class reform movements seeking to deal with social and economic problems through the use of governmental power. They drew on the same broad base of support and moral idealism, and they proposed similar solutions to society's ills. Examinations of temperance campaigns in such varied states as Texas, Washington, Tennessee, New Mexico, Virginia, California, and Missouri support Timberlake's conclusion that "prohibition was actually written into the Constitution as a progressive reform." [...]
'Far more optimistic than the preceding generation about man's capacity to solve problems and mold a satisfactory world, Progressives believed that their goals could be reached by creating the proper laws and institutions. Whether the particular task into which they plunged was raising the quality of life for the urban working class, conserving natural resources, establishing professional societies and standards, improving governmental morality, democracy, and services, or controlling business practices, Progressives repeatedly displayed their unshakable confidence that legal and bureaucratic instruments could be found which would permanently uplift that aspect of their environment.' "They believed," as Ralph H. Gabriel put it, "that man, by using his intellect can re-make society, that he can become the creator of a world organized for man's advantage."'
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